


Daoine Sidhe

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Bonding, Friendship, Gen, Grieving, Irish Language, Jealousy, Monmouth Manufacturing, Multi, Northern Irish Troubles, Pre-Raven Cycle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 04:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17594681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Jealousy ruined Ronan for the first several months of Adam’s introduction into the group; this would hurt him more than that.”-Page 148, Blue Lily, Lily BlueWhat that might have been like.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> Comments are welcome.  
> Please leave kudos if you enjoyed.
> 
> Title pronounced “Doonya shee.”
> 
> [I am extremely ambivalent about TRC becoming a tv show and am extremely compelled to write about these three falling in love, so I thought, why not make an entire dang series fulfilling my needs. Stories will vary in interconnectedness. Some will refer to canonical plotting, and some will not.]

Ronan Lynch became adept at cutting himself apart from the inside.

 

He visualized himself as Adam probably did, nightly when he brushed his teeth, or right when his eyes opened from a pointless slumber: an archetypal scary kid with self-destructive tendencies, wounded by grief with a yawning grave.

 

“He probably thinks I have a rudimentary knowledge of Gaelic and I’ll hex him with some Daione Sidhe curse.”

 

Gansey, marking the book in his lap with an index finger, said, “Do you?”

 

Ronan snarled, “I’m a little bit fucking angry you expected that of me. _Dick._ ”

 

This vituperative vitriol sank over his bones with the sweet embrace of a sepulchral night. It didn’t matter if Gansey longed for a lazy ramble through Aglionby’s grounds, the day resplendent with a sky that hurt your eyes, grass sparkling with newly fallen dew. Daylight flinched from his touch.

 

How he missed that sanctuary.

 

More pure than any cathedral (though he worshipped enough with his brothers every Sunday), more life-affirming than Latin (though he treasured his aptitude for speaking the language), the Barns fulfilled his embodiment of a home.

 

He had found a new one, but then someone stole it.

 

Furthermore, Adam didn’t care, or if he did, Ronan wasn’t the recipient.

 

No longer did Gansey consult him about what their afternoons might entail; now he talked his plans over with Adam before approaching Ronan. Perhaps Ronan presented himself as a roadblock, an obstacle even the most intrepid thrill-seeker hovered around before abandoning the headache for flightier pursuits.

 

Befriending Ronan Lynch was a privilege you earned. To study that gift with a scholar’s ambition before squandering it on hopeless possibilities meant your friendship died.

 

He could not break Gansey. Not over this.

 

Trickier still, he knew Adam internalized how he treated their bond with Gansey: in his narrowed-eyed summations of Ronan’s _Ronan_ ness, in his clipped whispers to Gansey over one of Ronan’s more daring exploits, in the harsh and often monosyllabic pleas to stop freeing the stitches of his tired black jeans or pounding out a reel on the tabletop of their booth at Nino’s.

 

Any day, Adam’s threshold might decay into a desiccated corpse from which rotting maggots crawled, forming cancerous masses on Ronan’s skin.

 

He dreaded that day.

He dreamt that day.

 

Gansey said, “Ronan Lynch, are we in agreement.”

 

“Fucking what.”

 

Monmouth Manufacturing seethed along with him. His brotherly abode transformed into a cleverly constructed prison with astonishing rapidity.

 

“You,” Gansey said, “are not ever hexing Adam Parrish, in this life nor in the next.”

 

Ronan said, “Gansey, I’m not fucking fae.”

 

Heavy with a ponderous weight, their silence welcomed the words: _there’s no name for you yet_.

 

From Ronan’s bedroom, in the doorway, Noah said, “I think your name’s been around forever. It’s waiting for us.”

 

Processing this wealth of speculation, Gansey clawed his book between his crouching knees, sighing. Ronan wanted to hurl his navy Aglionby uniform into a metaphorical furnace. He wanted to shake his friend until his attractive wireframes clattered on the well-trodden ground.

 

He ripped a seam in his dying black jeans and went about destroying them beyond sewing until Gansey said, “Invite him over.”

 

“ _What.”_

 

 _There you are_ : the meaningful telepathy borne from a gaze that forever unnerved and grounded Ronan in its mythical regality. He was dealing with a youthful bloom of terrific power and an ancient awakening older than the coldest hillside.

 

“How do you suggest we entertain him, oh mighty king?”

 

He had meant to sting with that blight, but the rightness of Gansey’s mocking title chilled him to the marrow.

 

Smiling, Gansey said, “What’s your favorite movie?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.

They watched _The Wind That Shakes the Barley_.

 

Adam knew that was not in fact Ronan’s favorite movie. There must be a reason for picking that one, he thought, out of the myriad choices available to them.

 

When he questioned Ronan on this point, he said, “They didn’t go over the the Troubles in fucking detail; we’re all due for a history lesson.”

 

He had assumed Adam was a novice in Irish history. (People tended to assume many things about Adam Parrish, about Aglionby students in general). Adam had read up a good deal on the Troubles after learning from Gansey that Ronan’s late father hailed from Belfast. True enough, plenty of information had been new to him: the events of the uprising in 1916, how the Irish became divided into those who supported England’s rule and those who did not, how religion entered into the dynamic. And, of course, how so much of it needed an eyewitness rather than a bland textbook overview.

 

To the movie’s credit, Adam learned more about the Troubles in a single viewing than he remembered from one sleepless night spent reading. Two brothers, one for England and one for Northern Ireland’s freedom, fought until one of them died a martyr for his cause.

 

Imagining Ronan pitted against his sworn enemy, Declan, in a war over freedom amused Adam in the dark manner of an old friend wryly musing on another’s misfortune. An apt parallel, considering Declan strove to free Ronan from the limitations of grief. Pity for him, considering Ronan committed himself to mourning with the hostile devotion of a soldier’s lover.

 

Did Niall Lynch want his son to mourn him so? To yearn for that permanence beyond the grave turned Adam’s stomach. Probably he wouldn’t have taken to Niall Lynch.

 

“Parrish,” Ronan said, “are you watching?”

 

Unbelievably, they had remained awake well past five in the morning. It was now approaching seven. Gansey, in his wireframes and Aglionby uniform, lay supine on his mattress, supporting his open journal with a crooked wrist. Ronan, in his usual black tank and unhappy black jeans, boots scuffed with remnants of dirt and grime from the driveway, watched a raven documentary on Gansey’s laptop. Adam knew they did not sleep. His own willingness to sacrifice his sleep surprised him.

 

Ignoring Ronan’s question, Adam studied Gansey’s friend, enthralled as he was in the wonderment of care bestowed on the corvid family. At this hour, in this vivid afterthought of a blue morning, he found Ronan a strangely gorgeous specimen. Prickling, Ronan turned to him.

 

“Fucking _what_ , Parrish.”

 

Flicking his gaze toward Gansey, Adam reacquainted himself with his friend’s thoughtful engagement in the journal’s contents. His friendship with Gansey, he knew, transcended the boundaries of that word, tangled it in the depthless realm of the mercifully tangible. With an aching desperation that came with sleeplessness, the abandonment of his usual safeguards, he wanted to confine that tangibility into something irreversible in the form of a kiss.

 

Gansey said, without taking his eyes off the journal, “What day is it?”

 

Ronan sneezed. “Where?”

 

Adam sighed.

 

He would wait another day.


End file.
